At COP28, the United States Will Stress an End to Fossil Emissions, Not Fuels
At COP28, the United States Will Stress an End to Fossil Emissions, Not Fuels - Inside Climate News
Not a chemist, but it seems like the alternatives to a carbon based combustion reaction are GHG CO2 and the deadly CO. I'm not sure how it is possible to use fossil fuels without emissions?
After reading the article it sounds like compromise language to get fossil fuel producing countries to sign on to a statement. I guess the idea being if carbon capture technology improved in the future that could be done. They're not talking about the carbon capture from the air stuff, which is pretty dumb, but carbon capture at point of origin of emissions where co2 concentrations are much higher, like at power plants. Probably also dumb, but maybe slightly more feasible with theoretical future technology that doesn't exist. Overall it doesn't mean much though, it's a language compromise to get more countries to sign on to some symbolic statement the conference will issue. I don't think any new major actual agreements are being planned for this conference. Though in a deal unrelated to the conference, it sounds like the US and China have made an agreement to lower methane emissions they may announce there.
The idea is to use 30% to 50% of the energy from burning fossil fuels to capture the CO2 and pump it back underground. It's expensive enough that it's almost always cheaper to avoid burning fossil fuels in the first place, but the idea is seen by the fossil fuels industry as giving them social permission to keep on extracting, burning, and dumping CO2 in the atmosphere
Generally, the fossil fuel industry needs to bury its idea's deep deep underground where they can't hurt anybody.
If we had governments that knew what they were doing & had the power, they'd set a future date by which time the fuel industries will be closed down (permanently)
That would motivate the type of transition needed to prevent a worsening #ClimateCrisis
Its amazing what society could do if decision makers were up against a dead line (prevent death line)
I've heard that back in the day when rivers where polluted as hell, there was this simple idea that made it into policy: an industry must draw water downstream from where they dump their liquid waste. If they wanted clean water, they had to filter it before releasing it back into the river.
Could a simple rule like this be enforced: if an industry is to dump anything into the atmosphere, they must intake any air consumed from that same spot.
Applying this to ICE cars would stall the engine. When applied to the cabin, it would kill the passengers. Diluting it into the air only postpones the problem. This "externality" has come due and it's expensive. Best to cut losses and stop pouring exhaust fumes into the air.
Always leaving a loophole for the business of the fuel industries. How, for example, are they going end the emissions of burning fuel in the myriad forms of combustion engined machines?
They can't even say what we must do, end the burning of fuels, because it's the fuel industries that are directing their policies.